“If you’ve just spent ten hours digging ditches on a hot summer day you don’t enter the tavern and begin to talk about the virtues of hard work and thrift, the beauty of Calvinism as a moral system. You want several mugs of beer.”
– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side
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“I don’t mind the middle of the ocean, or a garden choked with hot peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes, but idealized nature has always struck me as a fool’s paradise.
The cow lets fall an even Golden stream of shit, Terence, you lie under And never mind a bit of it.
I forget where I read this gem, but these verses always come to my mind when I read pastoral poetry. Very nice, one says to oneself, but what about the farmer beyond that gorgeous meadow who works seven days a week from morning to night and is still starving? What about his sickly wife and their boy, who tortures cats? As my father used to say, if country living was any good, all these cities would not be so packed.”
– Charles Simic, The Life of Images
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We all have work to do.
Not all of us have poetry written about our vocation.
It’s easy to idealise what we don’t know and to fool ourselves that we want what others have.
At the same time we don’t like being preached to about someone else’s ideals.
Often we are simply tired and in need of a little refreshment.
Wherever we live and whatever we do, there is always hard work.
We are all familiar with the unique challenges of our present work.
It’s easy to assume the alternative, over the distant hill, will be simpler and more fulfilling.
It’s nice to have a glimpse from time to time.
The trick is not to be fooled by the supposed greener hills.
Conversations With Quotations 